Martha's Vineyard, where I live, has 2 quality weekly newspapers (Vineyard Gazette; MV Times) full of quality writing, the occasional long-term 'investigative' piece, and LOTS of local coverage. Town meetings, school boards, select boards, school sports, etc. Reporting on issues like the nitrogen that's threatening all of our ponds & lagoons, ocean health & strees in the fishing industry, Coast Guard futures, the impact of a wave of immigrants on the school system, etc. For an island with a year-round population of ~20,000.
I think part of the reason for this kind of unusual success is that many off-island ("summer") people with a strong connection to the island have paid subscriptions. Local advertisers support both papers, of course. The Times used to be freely distributed to local mailbox holders, but went to a subscription-only model a few years ago. Both papers sell for a dollar a copy and you can find them for sale all over the place.
This perfectly articulated the oddity of Axios. Every time I see one of their articles, I keep waiting for the actual piece to start. In DC, at least, they are doing a lot of local coverage albeit in their weird bullet points style, and their reporters are popping up in lots of local podcasts, which is cool.
The most positive thing I can say about Axios is that it is generally local and in places that no one gives any shits about, like my hometown of Des Moines, where they employ two more journalists than the Des Moines Register does. The Gannett run papers are so pathetic that doing literally anything besides running an article an AP reporter wrote about your state counts as progress.
Axios also tries to sell training in their house style to foster optimized memo-writing, which they call "Smart Brevity". https://www.axioshq.com/research/smart-brevity-101 Again, the assumption is that no one reads, so AT ALL TIMES one should write for people who do not read instead of writing plainly and succinctly, and creating a work culture where people have the time to read and are expected to read.
i guess it was bad that everyone ‘scaled up’ fun blogs to become same-y news sites (chasing shrinking facebook traffic), but i liked the part where they hired freaks like me off the street just to get warm bodies in chairs posting Content
A guilty confession here. I was one of those incurious Americans who never read the local newspaper's serious stories. It was only when I started getting my news from the likes of the alt-weeklies and Pacifica Radio that I started taking an interest in serious news.
Who actually wants to consume “real” journalism?You’re making the case that there’s a demographic that wants to produce it, but everyone wants to consume either fluff or dumbed down ideas. Is the fundamental argument here that we need an obscenely profitable news sector so that they can overproduce hard journalism on the off chance that once in a while someone will accidentally read it? Attention is scarce and satisfying garbage is superabundant.
There is an audience for real journalism, but it's hard to profitably produce real journalism when the ad revenue model is broken. Also, real journalism is important in terms of keeping a democracy healthy and keeping the government honest, whether its readership is huge or not. Hence the need for public funding of journalism, at least until another viable economic model emerges.
Patreon and substack - thoughts? Also the levee and or defector? Also can you mention defector as similar new initiative that hopefully thrives? Also podcasts like majority report, chapo trap house. All new and exciting becuade spread by word of mouth, so literally all that matters is that the journalism or god knows what is good and its recommended. The flip is you get like matt taibbi who made serious serious errors in his reporting on censorship at twitter. No accountability there.
Martha's Vineyard, where I live, has 2 quality weekly newspapers (Vineyard Gazette; MV Times) full of quality writing, the occasional long-term 'investigative' piece, and LOTS of local coverage. Town meetings, school boards, select boards, school sports, etc. Reporting on issues like the nitrogen that's threatening all of our ponds & lagoons, ocean health & strees in the fishing industry, Coast Guard futures, the impact of a wave of immigrants on the school system, etc. For an island with a year-round population of ~20,000.
I think part of the reason for this kind of unusual success is that many off-island ("summer") people with a strong connection to the island have paid subscriptions. Local advertisers support both papers, of course. The Times used to be freely distributed to local mailbox holders, but went to a subscription-only model a few years ago. Both papers sell for a dollar a copy and you can find them for sale all over the place.
This perfectly articulated the oddity of Axios. Every time I see one of their articles, I keep waiting for the actual piece to start. In DC, at least, they are doing a lot of local coverage albeit in their weird bullet points style, and their reporters are popping up in lots of local podcasts, which is cool.
The most positive thing I can say about Axios is that it is generally local and in places that no one gives any shits about, like my hometown of Des Moines, where they employ two more journalists than the Des Moines Register does. The Gannett run papers are so pathetic that doing literally anything besides running an article an AP reporter wrote about your state counts as progress.
Axios also tries to sell training in their house style to foster optimized memo-writing, which they call "Smart Brevity". https://www.axioshq.com/research/smart-brevity-101 Again, the assumption is that no one reads, so AT ALL TIMES one should write for people who do not read instead of writing plainly and succinctly, and creating a work culture where people have the time to read and are expected to read.
i guess it was bad that everyone ‘scaled up’ fun blogs to become same-y news sites (chasing shrinking facebook traffic), but i liked the part where they hired freaks like me off the street just to get warm bodies in chairs posting Content
"Employs a lot of freaks as a side effect" was def one of the best things about the online media boom.
A guilty confession here. I was one of those incurious Americans who never read the local newspaper's serious stories. It was only when I started getting my news from the likes of the alt-weeklies and Pacifica Radio that I started taking an interest in serious news.
Who actually wants to consume “real” journalism?You’re making the case that there’s a demographic that wants to produce it, but everyone wants to consume either fluff or dumbed down ideas. Is the fundamental argument here that we need an obscenely profitable news sector so that they can overproduce hard journalism on the off chance that once in a while someone will accidentally read it? Attention is scarce and satisfying garbage is superabundant.
There is an audience for real journalism, but it's hard to profitably produce real journalism when the ad revenue model is broken. Also, real journalism is important in terms of keeping a democracy healthy and keeping the government honest, whether its readership is huge or not. Hence the need for public funding of journalism, at least until another viable economic model emerges.
Patreon and substack - thoughts? Also the levee and or defector? Also can you mention defector as similar new initiative that hopefully thrives? Also podcasts like majority report, chapo trap house. All new and exciting becuade spread by word of mouth, so literally all that matters is that the journalism or god knows what is good and its recommended. The flip is you get like matt taibbi who made serious serious errors in his reporting on censorship at twitter. No accountability there.