Massachusetts Bill Set to Subsidize Newspaper Subscriptions

Opinion | Why Has Local News Collapsed? Blame Readers.

You should read Waldman’s pitch in the Washington Monthly, but even if we build such a subsidy and tax-credited operation, can masses of readers be enticed to come? Are journalists designing local news initiatives that gratify them and their academics colleagues, but that lack appeal to readers? As my friend Jason Pontin, former editor and publisher of Technology Review, noted last month, “media types sentimentalize local news because it presents local news journalists as a heroic caste ‘holding the powerful to account’ and binding communities together.” But this “fetishization” of local news ignores the unwillingness of the public to pay for the product. Local news just isn’t producing a product that people need.”

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The local news movement won’t make much progress until its proponents realize that its primary obstacle is a demand-side one, not a supply-side one. It’s not that nobody wants to read local news; it’s just that not enough people do to make it a viable business. Maybe the surfeit of local news of yesteryear was the product of an economic accident, a moment that cannot be reclaimed. But even if you were to underwrite local news with taxes and philanthropy, and distribute it to citizens via subsidies, you’d still have to find a way to get people to read it. Until some editorial genius cracks that puzzle, the local news quest will remain a charitable, niche project advanced by journalistic, academic and political elites.