A very quick housekeeping matter before we get started, because on last week’s post about JLo’s magnificent new film [trailer],
(who writes one of my favorite newsletters, ) commented the below, and I think I’ll finally attempt to work the newsletter’s chat function for paid subscribers so we can all live-experience this together on February 16. I’ll make an announcement closer to the date, but just wanted to give you all a heads up.But on today’s actual subject:
Last week was a Very Bad Week for media, on the heels of a Very Bad Decade.
To catch you up: On Wednesday, Condé Nast announced that Pitchfork, "the most influential music publication with the power to make or break an artist," would be absorbed by GQ, the famously musically-leaning men's fashion magazine. Layoffs have already begun. And then, on Friday, Sports Illustrated's publisher — Authentic Brands Group — announced that it would lay off most of the magazine's staff as the publication’s future remains uncertain.
There are important questions about the creeping and invasive presence of private equity and billionaires in media companies and the protection of their own interests at the high cost of authentic journalism, as well as about the use of layoffs and dismantling of entire publications as potential union-busting techniques, but that's not what I want to discuss today. I want to talk about the death of the fourth estate and the corresponding increasing pretense of its plausible replacement by individuals — influencers, content creators, even, yes, newsletter authors.
You'll have to forgive me — I had to dip back into JSTOR mode for this.
Because if we agree, as I think most of us do, that the purpose of journalism in a democracy is, above all, to investigate and question those in power on behalf of the population at large, then the institution's slow death should be something that concerns all of us.
The below, from Jill Abramson's "Sustaining Quality Journalism," originally published in the Spring 2010 edition of Daedalus (I was not kidding about JSTOR).
Rigorous news-gathering plays a vital role in our society, especially in holding the largest and most important institutions accountable. It is easy to forget how afraid of centralized power the founders of this country were, and how the press was envisioned by them as a bulwark protecting the free flow of critical information about the powerful. No single form of news-gathering, single platform, or single news organization can by itself up hold this mission or supply all the intelligence, energy, and muscle needed to dig behind the most complex stories and cover them with the kind of depth that has elevated journalism's civic role over the last century.
It would be easy, perhaps, to observe the decline of cultural organizations like Pitchfork and Sports Illustrated and determine that because they are not "hard news" outlets, they are not representative of the crumbling state of journalism as a whole. But that, respectfully, would be a mistake, even without taking into account the over 20,000 media jobs (of which about 2,700 consisted of news industry jobs) that were cut in 2023 alone.
Because as newsrooms have been decimated, we have slowly been led to believe that what will save, or even capably replace, journalism, are not institutions, but individuals in our many chaotic form(at)s. Again: a mistake that fundamentally misunderstands the job of the fourth estate in our society. Not because influencers and their ilk are stupid or uninformed — I’ve written before about how much that is not the case — but because journalism plays a unique role in society that cannot be supplanted by them.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Hmm That's Interesting to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.