They say the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem.
I’ve said, after years of working with clients in crisis, that there’s nothing professionals can do to help an emergence from crisis until the client admits it’s in crisis.
Those were my first thoughts as I attended the “Local News Crisis Summit” in Detroit earlier this week. You can watch it here. It was an event that may be replicated across the country and, for the first time, it was refreshing, and potentially pivotal, to hear news business leaders talk openly about the challenges the industry is facing and what society is grappling with as a consequence.
We’ve been writing about these trends for 18 years, in part because news organizations themselves haven’t consistently leveled with their audiences about the contraction of the industry, along with consolidation and the way we, as consumers, access information, in other words, the transition from mass media to personal media. These trends have affected the PR and advertising businesses and also helped shape the political climate that affects everyone. Sure, you see some corporate-ease about “headwinds” and the like. But there has been, overall, a papering of the windows rather than the opportunities for sunlight that, as journalists, we were trained to encourage.
To preface a panel of industry leaders, researchers from Northwestern University and Michigan State University laid out the facts that include more than 200 counties nationally have no local news source. More than 1550 counties only have one. In Michigan alone, 65% of local newspaper jobs were lost in a ten-year span.
Then came more essential candor. On the panel, the CEO of a company that owns local TV stations admitted that there’s not enough revenue to support all of the TV stations in most markets and said that if the federal government lifts ownership caps, as expected, there will be increased consolidation. A public radio station director said it would be “hubris” to “assume (all) people even know who we are,” a candid admission of fragmentation.
To those looking for solutions to the crisis from philanthropy, one speaker, from the Press Forward initiative, cautioned that there’s “no way” philanthropy can make up for all of the lost revenue, but funds from these initiatives may encourage the industry to “try new things” and “create energy.” Another speaker talked of policy changes that may be attempted, such as a tax credit for local news advertisers.
As much as was discussed, there was one compounding factor of the crisis that was not mentioned on stage: The attacks on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution by a federal government with plans to diminish or extinguish news outlets that do not advocate for perpetuating its agenda. Layer that on top of all of the other factors and that makes the job of reversing trends even more challenging.
The fact that the crisis is now being acknowledged and explored in public is a first step. Now, everyone who cares about an informed society can and should pay attention.