As part of a recently enacted economic development bill, An Act Enabling Partnerships for Growth, a special legislative commission will shortly be established to look at how some communities are now "underserved by local journalism," and what may be done to improve that situation.
I think the legislature could have come up with a better way to describe the problem. We're talking here about the widespread die-off of local, independent newspapers due to the loss of advertising dollars to the internet. "Underserved by local journalism" sounds like lazy reporters and distracted publishers may be to blame.
But I shouldn't quibble with lawmakers for choosing words the way they've always chosen them, especially when I am delighted they have taken on the issue.
Nothing better than a good local newspaper has ever been devised to let people know what they really must about their community, and to hold the feet of the folks who run that community to the fire. Where newspapers are professionally advanced and financially healthy, community spirit is more tangible, local politicking is more robust, and the climate for civic engagement is more favorable.
It's difficult to quantify all the ruin when a newspaper goes belly up, or when a revenue-starved paper shrinks to a shadow of its former self, turning from lightning rod to object of pity and derision. (The actual, new term for such publications is "ghost newspapers.") Certainly, the human toll is enormous.
Since 2000, newspaper employment has dropped by 60%. That's a higher percentage than all the jobs lost in coal mining over the last 30 years.
In a Jan. 1, 2020, report on PBS News Hour, Charles Sennot observed, "When we lose 30,000 reporting jobs, as we have in the last 10 years, what we lose is the ability for us to have a shared set of facts on a local level, and for us to have a civic debate on the local level. And I think we're seeing a fraying of communities as well."
Two North Shore Democrats, Senator Brendan Crighton of Lynn and Rep. Lori Ehrlich of Marblehead, led the call for government to do something to fortify local journalism, first by introducing a stand-alone bill on the matter, which got stalled in the legislature, and then by ensuring that a version of the bill would be incorporated into the voluminous, multi-purpose economic development bill, which was passed on the last day of the 2019-20 legislative session, Jan. 5, 2021, and signed into law by Governor Baker nine days later.
In an interview afterward with the Lynn Item, Ehrlich said, "A lack of local news coverage is a fundamental threat to our democracy and civic society. Citizens rely on hardworking journalists to tell the stories that bind us together as communities. Trusted news sources provide a public square where shared facts and thoughtful opinion enable us to hold power to account and govern ourselves."
Ehrlich added, "With this commission, the Commonwealth will facilitate a serious discussion among experts, reporters and industry members about the state of local news in Massachusetts, and what fortification efforts can take place."
Also speaking with the Lynn Item, Crighton said, "Now, more than ever, we need a strong and robust news media to keep our citizenry as informed as possible and to ensure accountability."
Amen.
I do not have much of a concept of what this commission can actually do to halt and/or reverse the seemingly inexorable diminution of local reporting, but I dearly hope it can accomplish something.
I started my working life as a newspaper reporter for a small daily, the Chelsea Record, and stayed with the trade for more than a dozen years. My final news job was managing editor of the Malden Evening News. That was a good place and a good time to be in local journalism. We had six full-time reporters covering the City of Malden, all paid a livable, union wage. The Malden Evening News and its affiliated publications, the Medford Daily Mercury and the Melrose Evening News, employed more than 70 persons at their peak. Three bargaining units represented the interests of the majority of those workers: the Newspaper Guild, the Typesetters and Compositors, and the Pressmen's unions. As journalists, we were far from perfect, but we covered the community vigorously and as fairly as possible, and in a way it is no longer covered. My old outfit, after years of slow decline and a spell as a ghost newspaper, closed for good several years ago.
Back in the late-1970s, the newspaper business was so good that the principal owner-publisher of the Evening News/Daily Mercury group, David Brickman, moved the operation from its cramped, dingy quarters on Ferry Street, in Malden Square, to a new, larger, better equipped plant on Commercial Street, in the largest of the city's urban renewal districts. On the marble cornerstone of that new edifice, Mr. Brickman had these words engraved: "Bulwark of Freedom." A new owner totally remodeled and reconfigured the former home of the News-Mercury, including the main door and facade. The cornerstone, I'm pretty sure, was tossed into a dumpster. We should hope that its fate was not premonitory.
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