Editor’s note: This commentary is by Richard Watts, who is the co-director of Reporting & Documentary Storytelling and director of the Center for Research on Vermont at the University of Vermont.
[J]ournalism, and the democratic functions it performs – educating citizens and holding the powerful accountable – is in a crisis; tens of thousands of layoffs, cutbacks, and closures have hollowed out news coverage, especially away from the coasts, in rural areas and at the local level. In recent years, more than 20,000 reporters have lost their jobs and almost 2,000 news organizations have folded.
Former newspapers are now “ghosts” – content-free advertising vehicles for corporate owners. Facebook and Google have vacuumed up more than 75% of the ad revenue that used to feed news operations.
Meanwhile, remaining journalistic outlets are under assault from many directions, including the White House, “fake news,” filter bubbles, and social media outlets that exploit online news without contributing to it financially or otherwise. (Ironically, Facebook recently tried to privilege local news in a new app – but they had to cancel the program because they could not find enough local news.)
Vermont has done better, but is not immune to what has been happening around the country. Under one measure, the state has lost 100 reporters from our newsrooms in the last 15 years. But we still have many strong news operations including VTDigger, Seven Days, Vermont Public Radio, WCAX and a raft of community papers covering the local and the hyperlocal.
And it is local news that has drawn most of the attention lately. National papers and news operations have seen a surge in subscribers – a so-called “Trump bump” – as people turn to fact-based news to understand the events around them. But local news is suffering. There are 1,300 counties that have no longer have local news coverage, according to a recent study of “news deserts.”
Yet there are signs of life. A new study from The Shorenstein Center points to recent investments, the creation of news operations, including the Texas Tribune and ChalkBeat and new financial models that are working. (The paper cites VTDigger as a case study of a successful nonprofit news organization.) Another promising sign is massive investments from a number of foundations, including ironically, almost $300 million from Google and Facebook.
But it is local news that is at the heart of this renewed interest. Part of the reason for the decline in trust in journalism is that people no longer know their local reporter – because there is not one. And there is also interest in young people — journalism programs around the country are growing.
At UVM, we recently created a new program called Reporting & Documentary Storytelling. Core to the program is collaborating with Vermont’s rich media landscape to train and educate the next generation of journalists – but also to train and educate young people to be better storytellers, skills they can take with them to whatever career they choose. And part of our founding mission is for the university to participate in rebuilding trust in journalism. Without a free press there is no democracy. This summer we initiated the Community News Service, in which students — under the direction of a professional editor — craft local stories for Vermont’s fleet of community newspapers. We join with other excellent journalism programs in Vermont, at St. Michael’s, Northern University, Castleton and others to train and educate a new generation of reporters and storytellers.
It seems like this work has never been more important.
