A Media Critic Focuses on the Crisis in Local News

Was what happened to local journalism inevitable? Or was there a moment where things could have gone differently?

Traditional media companies could have responded to the changes much more nimbly. There was a whole thing about “Should we or shouldn’t we charge for the content of the paper?” For a long time, local newspapers decided not to. It never made any sense, because it costs lots of money to produce this journalism. We were very slow to take advantage of the particular strengths of the internet in a way that might have made a real difference.

The kind of work we do now — some newspapers, including The Times and The Post, present things in a way that’s much better than the way they’re presented in print. But for the longest time, newspapers, especially local newspapers, were just shoveling their content onto the web and expecting people to like it. It was smug. It was slow. And it hurt us.

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