The major newspapers have failed in
their mission. We need a new format that does everything they once did–curate,
inform, educate–without the baggage.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V
AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1
APR 1, 2025
The major newspapers simply aren’t getting the job done any
longer. Apart from the fact that the printed paper is outdated before the press
run is even finished, they aren’t telling us what we actually need to know in
an effective manner. Smaller local papers continue to disappear, and the three
leading national papers cower, cave and collaborate with the demands of the
Orange Monster and their own corporate masters – joined these past few weeks by
several of the largest law firms and major universities.
We are largely left to our own devices to find alternative
sources of substantive news, serious thought, and opposition to the onrushing
autocracy.
Newspapers today – even with unlimited online space – are
opting for fluff, filler, and a lot of nice-to-know nonsense instead of
substantive coverage of pressing national affairs. Many local papers are now
dropping editorial pages entirely. And, as they shrink in size and shirk their
obligations, they look like unfortunate jugglers trying to catch the wrong end
of a bunch of plummeting knives – painful, pathetic, and painted red with the
blood, sweat and tears of departed staffers.
The most immediate result of layoffs, buyouts, and bizarre
dictates by billionaire owners like Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times and Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post is the continued flight of major
talent. Readership is disappearing, too. Many of the best writers,
editors, and reporters have abandoned the major rags to set out on their own to
tell their stories and honor their callings through social media, YouTube videos, podcasts and new digital forums.
But it’s an enormously difficult task to find an audience and make a living
while you’re at it.
The Best Journalists Are Leaving Newspapers Behind
Online digital channels like Substack, which provide a
forum for opinions, reports and longer articles, are the prime beneficiaries of
the writers’ exodus, for example, Jennifer Rubin of the Post. I also like Joyce Vance, Heather Cox
Richardson, Shelly Palmer, Charlie Sykes, and Frank Bruni. Other new services
like Bluesky and Threads — which unfortunately followed the constricted Twitter
model best suited to short slander, right-wing hate, and trolling — haven’t
really offered much of a viable alternative, despite building substantial
audiences.
You can’t really say much of value if your message needs to
be truncated into a dozen little squibs. And literally millions of new users
signed up for these services without a clue as to what they were likely to find,
or which other users and contributors might be on any given channel.
But these new forums, channels and writers face a much
bigger obstacle that is likely to financially doom many new authors seeking a
viable audience. What you say or how well you’ve said it doesn’t matter if (a)
no one can find your work and (b) if, as a result, no one is reading or
listening to it. Even if you think you know what you’re looking for, without a
specific name in mind, there’s virtually no way to find anything of value among
the thousands of returns that a typical Google search might generate. There are
no editors, curators or guideposts to manage the constant stream of new
material.
How Substack Hurts Its Own Users
Substack makes life even more challenging for its
authors to build a sustainable audience by the utterly stupid step of
automatically unsubscribing anyone suspected of forwarding a post to a mailing
list. In other words, while their own offers litter every column with pitches
to subscribe at various fee levels (including free), Substack punishes anyone
for aggressively sharing a particular piece with a larger audience of potential
subscribers by kicking them off the author’s page. This even includes articles
which have been served for free by writers trying to get their message shared
as widely as possible.
As if finding new materials and writers wasn’t tough
enough, the Substack idiots penalize people for providing free marketing for
their authors.
With Trump and his flunkies now threatening to effectively
limit access to Social Security and privatize the United States Postal Service,
online services may soon be the only effective channels that remain for most of
our population. As they envision their brave new, tech-first world, the MAGAts
never bother to mention the millions of older, rural and poor people, including
their own supporters, who still lack access to online internet services or
cellphones.
There are still important and critical nuggets of
information regularly buried among the gross amount of garbage we get online.
Today we all live in various degrees of fear of missing something critical from
a friend, family, bank, litigant, government agency or other correspondent. And
we regularly do miss messages directed to us at infrequently visited sites.
How To Be a Better Reader
Given this cluttered context, the scarcity of our time, and
the fractionalizing of our attention, you need to selectively invest the energy
in finding valuable new information sources, intelligent and informed writers,
and news feeds that anticipate important events and prepare you to respond.
That’s in contrast to those that merely regurgitate the same tired
factoids we see in dozens of different posts across the web.
You can start by finding out where some of your favorite
columnists moved and follow them. But this process is too often
frustrating. Medium does a decent job of collecting your interests
(very generically) and then provides a long list of suggested writers who might
be relevant. But it feels like a complete crapshoot, and you’re required to
subscribe and pay a fee to proceed. Plus, much like those of us who presently
subscribe to too many streaming services for no good reason, it quickly becomes
a fairly expensive proposition to spend $50 a pop to support a dozen of the
newspaper columnists you used to follow in one or two places.
Interestingly enough, this process of aggregation,
validation and assembly of select writers, educators, scientists and other
professionals used to be one of the primary functions of major newspapers. Your
favorite paper was basically a one-stop shop, a convenient, well-organized and
edited, and relatively painless delivery system especially when compared with
the absolute drudgery that discovery on the web today represents. Those were
the good old days.
Bottom line: we need a trusted online aggregator, or maybe
a linking service more tailored than Apple News, where users can find and
designate the content, authors, commentary and topics that interest them and
have those delivered in a single, morning submission. Sorta like the newspaper
you used to find on your doorstep.
