Journalism Wednesday Is Today!

Support Real Journalism!

December 02, 2020

Today is Journalism Wednesday! Every year on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, people are encouraged to purchase subscriptions, make donations, and otherwise support journalism across America and the world.

This is the 5th year of Journalism Wednesday, and it's admittedly the most modest effort yet. There's what you're reading here, and my own personal encouragement to people on other forums to participate. The first year this attracted some attention, with some residual support the second year. Now it's a small thing. But even if JW is small, the concept is not. It's vitally important.

I started Journalism Wednesday in 2016 in the aftermath of a terrible election cycle. What I saw then was that corporate journalism - especially, but not only, the cable news networks - had basically gone full bore into spectacle, to the point of being complicit in Donald Trump’s election. Meanwhile, small outlets, especially local print journalism outlets, were literally dying. An outright assault on journalism as an institution was under way, what with cries of "fake news" and the like. Some entities were fully able to withstand that assault and even prosper. But others suffered greatly. And it's only gotten worse.

Numerous local news outlets have shuttered in recent years. Local outlets simply don't do well online, and even larger daily newspapers struggle greatly, putting their content behind clunky paywalls or forcing you to sift through screaming ads - either way, enough to turn a lot of people off.

Then came the pandemic.

Consider the Chicago Reader, an alt-weekly institution, a free paper dating back decades. Their classifieds revenue had already largely dried up in recent years. This year, they lost roughly 90% of their core ad revenue, because the places which normally bought ad space - think concert halls, restaurants, theaters - were themselves closed and had nothing to advertise.

I believe that the Reader, one way or another, will endure. But they've already scaled back to every other week. They've moved to a nonprofit model. They've imposed staff furloughs. They are pleading with their loyal readers for support.

Meanwhile, other publications have similarly gone the nonprofit route. The local weekly paper serving my town, the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark, is published by a company which is now a nonprofit, and which actively solicits donations. Much like the Reader, their classified revenue isn't what it used to be, and a lot of the other ads you might expect to see in the paper just didn't run this year.

But while they're still publishing, so many others are not. If one thing or another hadn't gotten them over the last few years, the pandemic did them in.

When a local newspaper goes under, many things are lost. People's jobs. Community glue. Studies have shown that where local papers fold, political corruption and polarization go up. These aren't small things. And once lost, trying to get them back is incredibly difficult.

There are foundations out there now trying to help. NewsMatch is one, and I hope when you read through all this, you consider going through NewsMatch to donate to local journalism nonprofits, so your contributions can be matched. The American Journalism Project is another. But at best such entities can be only part of the solution.

What I am pleading with you to understand and accept is that journalism is a high public service, one for which we are all citizen-consumers, and as such, it is our role as such citizen-consumers to directly support this service.

We must pay for the journalism we consume, if we want it to continue to be there.

If we care about the long-term future of our communities, we must recognize the central importance of local journalism as a glue for our communities - and we must be willing to pay for subscriptions and to engage our family, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens in the overall journalistic process. It's not just about reporting and editing and publishing. It's also about reading, sharing, commenting. Citizenship is not a passive endeavor!

I'd be very happy if Journalism Wednesday could go viral, could be picked up by news outlets themselves and shared far and wide. But even if it's just me getting across to a handful of people I know the importance of annually thinking about this, annually renewing subscriptions, trying new things, sharing with one another... I'm going to keep it up. It's that important.

If you want to be a vocal participant this year, I recommend that any subscription, purchase, donation, etc. you make, you post on Twitter about it. Direct it at the outlet in question. Add the #journalismwednesday tag. Even if it's only a few of us, those outlets do take notice... I think.

Where have my journo-dollars gone this year and where might they go this Journalism Wednesday? Here's a list - maybe not a complete list, because maybe y'all will recommend something new for me!

Also, I subscribe to some Substacks! Three I strongly recommend:

NumLock News (Walt Hickey)

Popular Information (Judd Legum)

HEATED (Emily Atkin)

How about you? Where will your JW$ go this year?

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