Quality You Can Read

The news is important to a lot of us. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hard hitting piece about the Russia investigation, or the latest on a basketball player’s injury. People want reliable and current information.

“Journalism is fundamental to democracy,” freelance journalist Darlene Principe said. “I don’t think democracy can be successful without good journalism.”

But increasingly, newspapers are owned by chains not connected to the community of readers. For example, the company Digital First Media owns daily newspapers in 28 cities, along with weeklies in 48 cities, and many say this is not a positive development.

“I think, generally, the idea is that it’s a good thing for a local paper to be owned locally,” Los Angeles Times Reporter Tre’vell Anderson said.

“It’s small, local, community-type newspapers that are really ensuring that local governments aren’t corrupt,” Principe said.

“Families, parents and grandparents love to get the local newspaper,” former newspaper publisher and reporter Matt Thacker said. “You can see your kids and your grandkids [in the local newspaper], and there’s that whole community experience.”

“When you have newspapers that are owned by Wall Street bankers who have no connection to the places where the papers are located, it’s less likely that you’ll have quality journalism,” retired journalism professor Richard Hendrickson said.

Another issue facing newspapers is the availability of free information online. Some newspapers have been able to move their content online successfully, but others have not.

“Too many newspapers shy away from going online because it costs money,” CSUN Journalism Professor Benjamin Davis said. “They haven’t figured out how to make enough money to pay their reporters and to cover other costs that they have.”

According to the Pew Research Center, digital newspaper subscriptions at some major newspapers went up following the 2016 presidential election. For example The New York Times added half a million subscriptions in 2016.

But not all readers like online newspapers.

“There is some credibility,”  Thacker said, “with having an actual newspaper.”

“There’s something unique about print,” Principe said. “That allows you to cover something in a way that maybe [with] digital, you wouldn’t be able to.”

Another issue facing newspapers is the political divisiveness in the country, and the rise of what some call ‘fake news’. One way that people can combat fake news is to become media literate.

“I think more can be done on the media literacy tip,” Anderson said, “to ensure that, particularly [among] the people who are in the flyover states, who aren’t on the coasts, and who might not absorb as much news as we do on the coasts, that they are able to spot things that just don’t seem right.”

“You just have to be able to identify, or at least try and verify, whether something is credible or not,” Principe said.

Moderator: Son Ly

Producer: Karen Elle

Anchor: Kelcey Henderson

Social Media Editors: James Farr and Savannah Palacio

Reporters: Karen Elle, James Farr, Kelcey Henderson, Son Ly and Savannah Palacio