Knewsies

All the illogic that's fit to spew

“If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again,” Henry Thomas Palmer. Mr. Palmer was a printer, author, and educational reformer.

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As local news fails to succeed, the people at the helm want us to keep handing over money so they can try, try, try again. I’m sick of it.

Today it was Steve Waldman. Who is, “not anti-tech.” He runs a non-partisan organization called Rebuild Local News. It’s non-partisan the way he is not anti-tech. It’s entirely partisan. It’s pro news and anti everyone else.

In a very partisan very anti-tech way, he wants Google and Meta to pay to revive local news. He more than just wants it, he testified in California in favor of a pro local news bill that would provide “massive support for local news… paid for with a tax on Google and Facebook.” Oh, “… and Amazon.”

He reasons thus… they have lots of money. Together, he notes, Google’s parent, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon, “Took in $1 trillion in revenue.” He continues, “That's more than Proctor and Gamble, Lockheed Martin, Eli Lilly, McDonald's, ATT, Coca-Cola, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Nike and Netflix — combined. Times two!”

Let me write out what a trillion dollars looks like so it has the kind of impact he’d like it to have.

1,000,000,000,000

A lot of zeros, right? Which is about as many as his illogical argument that, “Having Alphabet, Meta and Amazon help solve this crisis would force them to reduce their profits from $240 billion all the way down to $239 billion.”

There are haves. The rich tech companies. And there are have-nots. The poor (in every possible way) downtrodden media companies who produce local news.

We live in a moment where it’s easy to call for people to pay their fair share. Tax people who have it. We need it. They won’t feel it. Apple pie and motherhood wrapped in a bunch of stripes and a hell of a lot of stars.

This is the part that won’t make me sympathetic or popular. But I don’t care. I’m neither sympathetic nor popular and never have been. He’s wrong about all of it.

He says the main reason local news declined is because the business model broke. People didn’t abandon local news. Advertisers did. This is his best argument and he’s half right. Advertisers did leave. Because audiences left. Not enough people care about local news to consume it. Even fewer people care enough to pay for it. Those are key factors in where advertisers spend their dollars.

His next reason is the ad biz is booming because media companies collect personal consumer information. Yep. They do. Which, he says, allows advertisers to advertise everywhere and skip the part where they need to be near news. Wow. I don’t even know where to start. If I’m an advertiser, I want to be near consumers. I don’t care if consumers are near news or near sports or near kumquats.

What he won’t admit or fails to see in his opening arguments is audiences don’t care about news. That’s the crux of news’s failure.

But, hey, per Palmer. Keep trying. So, Steve does.

Algorithms harm society and democracy. YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, he says, “Stoke anger, fear, insecurities, and suspicious.” Let’s, for a moment, accept that this happens. Is local news all unicorns and rainbows? No. Of course not. Do editors eschew bad stories? I’d hope not. Do they push the feel not good stories down so we don’t see then. Nope. So, what are we saying here? Tech bad.

We need, he pleads, for, “A flood of new reporters to displace disinformation, rumor and partisan content.” You’re actually kidding, right?  The new head of NPR, Katherine Maher, is a maelstrom of yuck since she said, “For our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth, and seeking to convince others of the truth, might not be the right place to start.” There’s a lot of context to this and it’s worth reading. Pro anti-trust (pro Maher). The counterpoint (pro trust, anti-Maher). Either way, reporters are NOT the answer to disinformation, rumor, or partisan content.

One more plank to toss on the fire before a rant to wrap things up. Steve says, “AI is another reason we need more, not fewer, local reporters.” Laughable. Since AI is gutting newsrooms faster than the audiences fleeing news to scroll cat pics.

And, with that, it’s rant time.

Meta doesn’t want news on Facebook and their users don’t care. Why should they pay for local news? News gave their news to Google. For free. For decades. Why should Google pay for local news? By the logic here, tech has done no harm to local news. They should just pay because they have money and they’re news adjacent. You may as well ask GM for money because people listen to local news in their cars. Get Hilton to pay for local news because people watch local channels that carry news when they’re on the road. And, when you’re done shaking down anyone who’s likeability score is somewhere below the Yankees in Boston, you’ll have some money to keep news floating until it hits the next iceberg.

What happens to the money? Who gets it? In what proportions? Why do we keep funding NPR instead of other local news organizations? There are so many questions.

So, I’ll just ask one. Wouldn’t it just be simpler if local news found a business model that works?