The Life, Death, and Life of American News

The news is dead. Long live the news.

Land where you choose on this divide. But we are here to tell you, unequivocally, the news is not dead.

We’re not referring to what you see on TikTok, Facebook or Instagram (oops, sorry, we forgot – those last two are one and the same).

We’re talking news.

Actual gumshoe, feet on the ground, covering staid township committee and statehouse meeting news. It’s real and it’s covered. And available to you dear reader.

Now, granted, some may have more trouble accessing than others.

Some news – subscriptions to the New Yorker and its ilk – may be more expensive than some may want or be willing to pay. That is life and that is capitalism. In my hometown of Philadelphia, there are very expensive stores that do not sell wares to certain city demographics. And there are stores in neighborhoods that I would not buy from because I do not live or spend time in those neighborhoods.

It’s not a philosophical thing or an attitude thing or a tribal thing. I hang my hat in the most obvious and convenient places to hang my hat.

And some news – it is what it is – is slanted. Because the news media, as everyone from the Beltway to Billings knows, is predominantly liberal. In D.C. and New York and Los Angeles and pretty much every major coastal urban area and large population center.

And then you wonder, what is news. We knew what constituted news in this republic for a long time. Now, not so sure.

By some estimates, 70% of Americans get their “news” from social media. And much of that, we know, is not news. Ideological spewage that happens to contain a metric or two is not news.

Lies are not news. Lies, if and when they exist, should be in the opinion pages so people know they are reading someone’s opinion (yes, I know….some spewing lies do not think of them as lies…..some of course know damn well when they’re lying).

But lines are blurred. They are blurred because so much “opinion news” is cloaked in the respectable citadels of real news. Fox news is conducted and presented in real studios with real anchors and reporters who do the actual work of presenting news. You wouldn’t watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and think for a minute that you are being fed lies or blatant propaganda. Mostly of course because you’re watching her because you believe her. And align with her.

I worked in television and print newsrooms for many years. This was before the existence of social media and the polarization – very real and very vindictive and as full of obfuscation as it could be at times – was a heated game of tidily winks compared to what we witness now.

Once I wrote a piece on abortion, spending time with both sides then writing a piece after a Supreme Court decision that had the potential to shift the narrative – and the laws. I was so careful that after the story was published, a representative from the side I align with philosophically and politically complained that my story was not balanced enough.

How did this interview subject come to this conclusion? He counted the actual lines in the story. Not the most scientific method for determining bias in a story, but it wasn’t my job to counsel my sources on how to read a news story. I explained my intent and my execution and I presume he got off the call still feeling like I had misrepresented his position.

The merit of that notwithstanding, clearly I had done a good job not letting my personal feelings impact my reporting.

Today, you need not count lines in a story to detect bias.

You don’t need to activate the timer on your Apple watch to know how much of the hourlong Fox or MSNBC newscast is biased or at least aligned with one side of the political spectrum. You are watching because you want to watch because you agree with the viewpoints stated.

Preaching to the choir has taken on a whole new meaning in the last half decade.

So where do you go? Where do you go when you want to read the news, unfiltered, shorn of opinion? Where a reporter reports what he or she sees, using their power of observation to present a story about an event that happened as it happened, with analysis of its impact on the people involved regardless of those folks’ place on the ideological spectrum?

There are many places. One is CalMatters.

CalMatters is the largest not-for-profit news organization in the state of California which, with 40 million residents, is the world’s fifth largest economy. That is not a misprint or opinion. Since California became the California we all know and love – or, whatever your feelings happen to be – it has often been a bellwether of what we as a country felt politically, culturally, socially.

CalMatters describes their mission as reporting the news, reporting it accurately with no bias – there can be no bias when you are non-profit, beholden to your benefactors – and holding politicians accountable. That last part alone is of course a full-time endeavor.

In their mission statement they cite the need to “fill the void in state government coverage caused by the decline of traditional journalism organizations.”

For profit news doesn’t cover the way they used to cover.

When I was a reporter 30 years ago for the Philadelphia Inquirer, they had 15 national and international bureaus plus robust coverage of Washington and Harrisburg, the state capital.

In 2022 you will hardly ever see a byline from an Inquirer reporter far afield from Philadelphia or its suburbs. The newspaper still does quality work and has won two Pulitzer Prizes in recent years, giving it 20 total since the mid-1970s. The reduced coverage footprint and resources of newspapers across the land is another story for another day. But it is worth noting that newspapers are not only covering less – there are less of them.

In 1970, according to reports, there were 1,748 newspapers in the United States. By 2018, that number had dropped to 1,279, a 26% decrease.

But at a time when some news outlets feel they need flashing lights to get and keep attention, what CalMatters provides is news that some would jokingly call boring; actual dispatches from the human front, coverage of meetings and other events regarding what is happening macro and micro in California that affects the lives of everyday citizens.

It’s not about who gets the most clicks. It’s not about being the most provocative and building audience by the volume of your voice or the shock factor of your topics.

We are intrigued by this at True Thirty as the defining philosophy and description of our news coverage is slow journalism. Slow journalism as in taking the time to do the research, do the interviews and present the facts.

We recently sat down twice with Marcia Parker, the Chief Operating Officer of CalMatters, once for this story and once for Joey Dumont’s forthcoming True Thirty podcast. CalMatters, now in its 7th year, has 52 staff members, 38 of them journalists. They have over 160,000 subscribers to their newsletter. There were approximately four million California residents who visited the site at least once in 2021 or about 10% of the state’s population. The website receives around 1.8 million visitors per month.

CalMatters also partners with over 250 media entities in the state from metro newspapers to major market radio stations and this year has an $8.6 million budget thanks to support from a variety of corporations, foundations and institutions.

Parker is also the Board Chair for the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), a collaborative of approximately 360 nationwide nonprofit news organizations.

Parker is justifiably proud that the work has resulted in changes in legislation and changes in perspective from an investigation of California’s poor oversight of nursing homes to stories that led to the funding of a mental health hotline system to series on wildfires, evictions and unemployment. CalMatters reporters have won several local, state and national awards.

She is also proud of California Divide, the largest editorial team at CalMatters, which specifically reports on issues of poverty and income inequality.

Whereas for-profit journalism has been damaged by a reduction in advertising dollars over recent decades, “we don’t have to worry about advertising,” Parker said during the podcast. “We now have a more sustainable business model,” she added, noting that non-profits frequently in their nascent stages rely on one-time donors.

“This is a new model to save journalism,” she proclaimed.

Recent years have been a boon for some journalism organizations regardless of whether they are for-profit or non-profit.

“The pandemic changed demand for what we can give them,” she noted about the constantly evolving Covid story since early 2020. And Covid coverage of course has been frequently intertwined with politics which has been a fire alarm red maelstrom since the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

“California is a very liberal state,” she noted, referencing the battle lines that have existed in recent years. “There was a lot of bumping heads with (Governor Gavin) Newsom versus Trump. There has been a lot of news and readership has been helped by this.”

Parker emphasizes that the news industry as a whole has to take a hard look at what it covers, who it covers, who it relies on to source its coverage and how well CalMatters is holding up its own end of the bargain vis a vis a diverse staff that mirrors those they cover.

There is a reckoning that Parker believes – and some evidence seems to support – has started to take place. The aforementioned Philadelphia Inquirer just last month presented an ambitious multi-part piece on its own failed past as a diverse workplace.

While Parker admits that CalMatters’ leaders are white and older, she noted that 50% of the staff is people of color, not far from the state’s tally of just over 60%.

She cited the industry’s “terrible record of having diversity. And we’ve lost perspective because of this lack of diversity.”

But, she continued, “we are starting to create the right conversations in the newsroom. In the last two years we’re really starting to talk about these issues.” Even in for-profits she said, “I see it across the industry.”

CalMatters, she added, conducts DEI training for its staff and content audits to vet how well their sources reflect the subjects of the stories they write.

She also feels the pandemic has motivated more foundations to invest more in news organizations that have helped serve, mostly, underserved populations. Dumont notes in the podcast that approximately 40% of the state’s population lives below the poverty line. The state has a $3 trillion economy and a budget of around $300 billion. CalMatters allocates significant resources to make sure money is being spent in a manner that benefits those who need it most.

And in 2022? Well, there are of course elections. There are always elections. What remains to be seen is whether, in the current climate, there can be even a modicum of civility as Democrats try to protect a flank that the Republicans will no doubt do everything in their power to annihilate.

But elections are not only, these days especially, bitter. They can also be confusing. California, for instance, is known for its propositions which are famous/infamous for both their quantity and byzantine quality.

One thing CalMatters is doing to engage and explain is their ballot proposition election guide which they attempt to make both informative and fun. And, hey, bonus points to anyone who makes anything about elections seem like fun.

The 2020 version was viewed by 4.2 million residents. CalMatters created a video where the candidates were presented as contestants. It was produced in multiple languages, translated into others and inserted into many of CalMatters’ partner newspapers.

Just one of the many efforts geared to engage and inform, with an eye on those less fortunate, with less access. It’s a daunting task, Parker admits.

“I don’t think any of us are that great at it,” she said about the efforts that CalMatters and so many others are engaged in to get news distributed in the right way to as many people as possible. “It’s really humbling to do that in a state this big.”