Harry Targ
The Journal and Courier serves Lafayette and West Lafayette and all of Tippecanoe County in the state of Indiana. This onetime locally owned newspaper with roots going back 100 years was purchased by the Gannett newspaper empire which was further consolidated with a media conglomerate, New Media Investment Group, a holding company, in 2019. One source reported that this most recent consolidation would create a mega-corporation that owns more than 250 daily newspapers and hundreds of weekly and community newspapers.
https://www.inquirer.com/business/gannett-new-media-newspapers-local-philadelphia-20190805.html
I enclose below a Letter to the Editor I sent to the
digital version of the Journal and Courier in April. As expected, I received no
response beyond the initial “thank you” for submitting a letter. Today, May 16,
2021, one of Indiana’s two Trump supporting US Senators, Mike Braun had an “opinion
piece” prominently published on page two of the Sunday edition of the paper.
Braun, in this guest column, opposes any federal legislation that would
regulate police conduct. He implies that the Biden Administration is
anti-police, as opposed to the prior administration. In the body of the column
Braun refers to last summer’s “riots,” and his own narrow reading of the
“defund the police” slogan.
This “guest opinion” is at least labeled such. Prior
editorials, such as the one referred to below, have not been so labeled.
However, the newspaper no longer prints guest columns or letters to the editor,
longtime staples of the old newspaper. And as indicated the Letter to the
Editor below was not published in the digital edition.
The more important story than this letter is that, to
the extent people still read newspapers, a sizeable portion of newspaper consumers
are reading from publications that are owned by a handful of media
conglomerates. At this point such conglomerates have little or no journalistic
background and have invested in newspapers for purposes of making huge profits
from their shift to advertising circulars or selling newspaper assets. As
Margaret Sullivan, media critic from the Washington Post, has pointed out,
2,000 local newspapers have been shut down and thousands of reporters have lost
their jobs since 2004.
https://lithub.com/margaret-sullivan-on-the-epidemic-of-news-deserts-and-ghost-papers/
It is time for progressives to give some thought to
the role of media in defending the flow of ideas and information, vital to the
maintenance of democracy. Attention should still be given to print media,
television, and radio along with social media. The concept of “public
trust,” should be reintroduced into policy debates, and conversations must be
held about reviving regulations concerning media monopolies. In addition, ideas
should be generated about ways for governments to support and incentivize the
maintenance of local media. Local media are public goods, much like roads,
bridges, schools, and libraries. A vibrant democracy cannot rely on the good
will and expertise of small numbers of corporations with their own pecuniary
interests to provide information and knowledge.
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Dear Editor,
I have been a Journal and Courier subscriber for over
fifty years. I did not always agree with their coverage and interpretation of
the news. I surely did not agree with many of their editorials or guest
columns. But they always provided useful information to the community, had a
livelyletters to the editor page, and often guest columns from a variety of
points of view. But all that has changed. Stories are largely about crimes,
taken from police blotters, and are racist in tone. Further they eliminated
letters to the editor and guest columns. And they fill up the paper with
stories grafted from other Gannett papers, obituaries in huge type, and full
page ads for roof repairs and new shower installations.
Today they posted in the first section an anti-union
story, really an editorial comment, as news. It is an opinion piece endorsing
Governor Holcomb's support of legislation allowing teachers to more easily and
frequently opt out of their union. Again, as an opinion piece it is legitimate,
but it is not news. I think now is the time for community members to say to the
Journal and Courier: "Enough is Enough." The paper has lost all of
its journalistic integrity and does not serve the community any longer. The
monopolization of the media, downsizing newspapers, eliminating community input
is occurring all around the country. For those who are concerned about the
declining awareness of the citizenry about what is happening to them, put some
of the blame on the Gannett's and Journal and Couriers of this new world order.
April 18, 2021
