You Can Fix Local Journalism for $10 billion Dollars

Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. has a plan to fix local journalism and it will cost $10 billion bucks to do it.

Bacon wrote an opinion piece for the post and his plan is to hire 87,000 new journalists for about 1,300 news organizations with more than $10 billion in funding.

He says that there is a growing recognition that the collapse of local news and information is a crisis undermining the United States’ politics and communities. Ten billion isn’t much money for the United States to spend on something the nation defines as a crisis. Millions of dollars are already being pumped into reviving local journalism, although right now that’s largely limited to a few major cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia.

You can read his full piece at this link.

I agree that the government could easily afford the $10 billion bucks, but can you trust that station groups (I’m talking TV here and not newspapers) to spend the money wisely?

Right now, there are a number of solid Journalists that see the future of this business and have decided to exit now.

Many of the people being hired now don’t really care about being a Journalist, they want to be a personality. Many are hoping that TV just helps their social media clout.

We have seen time and time again, so-called Reporters that more time into their latest TikTok or YouTube video than they do into their package for the 6:00 news.

When they are called in and talked about their social media post, they say that “everyone else is doing it”, or “I’m just showing people a different side of me.”

Until we start paying Journalists a salary that can bring in more than the low-hanging fruit, this is what we are stuck with.

But, at the same time, we need news managers that are guiding these young Journalists and laying down rules as to what can and can not be posted on your station-branded social media.

If someone wants to post a video of them dancing and lip-syncing to some stupid video, let them do that on their personal account, if they really feel the need to post that crap.

Station-branded social media should be free of all that crap and so be packed with news information.

It’s really not that hard, but news managers won’t make the effort.

$10 billion dollars to fix local Journalism would be nice, but you still have to use that money on qualified people that are in this business for the right reason.