On August 10, 2021, the "Boston Review" website published an article by Kevin M. Lerner, entitled "The news is dead, long live the news!" ", talking about the crisis of American journalism.
Many scholars believe that American journalism, especially print journalism, is suffering from its biggest crisis since the 1970s. Today, more and more people believe that if dynamic and trustworthy news is to continue to survive, we need to rethink the production of news in an all-round way.
Usher's book "Journalism for the Rich, White, and Blue State: How Places and Power Distorted American News" discusses the relationship between journalism, politics, and places. She pointed out that the decline of local journalism and the corresponding rise of highly concentrated national news organizations have made people increasingly distrustful of the media, because with the concentration of journalism in a few coastal elite metropolitan cities—— Its typical representatives are the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post", and the news is even more targeted at rich whites who tend to be liberal. Along with this, since 2005, the employment rate of journalism has fallen by 47%, more than 18,000 American communities have become "news deserts", and thousands of journalists have disappeared-all in all, reading print newspapers No longer regarded as an integral part of the local community, the role of the reporter has become more distant and less connected to you and your lifestyle. Mino’s book "Saving the News" also focused on similar themes, but she did not go to the "community" to find the reason, but believed that we should re-examine the relationship between the government and the press: "First Amendment" Looking at government intervention from a negative perspective, she believes that positive government intervention should be revisited. Mino reminds us that historically, in the history of the development of American newspapers, the government has often played an active role: the establishment of the national postal system in 1792 made the circulation of printed matter more widespread; the postage discounts for newspapers and magazines increased the number of postal subscriptions. Great; ... And the structural control of newspapers and periodicals by the U.S. government also affects the nature of the news collected and reported. In the face of the press crisis, what should we do? Usher believes that the decline of community newspapers has enabled us to enter the "post-newspaper" era. We can also take advantage of the situation and separate weather forecasts and entertainment information from local news so that reporters can focus more on supervisory reporting; at the same time , Increase the exclusivity, authenticity and diversity of newspapers. Mino suggested that the government should supervise platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and oblige them to eliminate false news; for algorithm recommendations, we should have more local news to enrich people's cognition.
