Since I lost my gig at InvestorPlace, I have lost my ability to research my beat.
Every story I want to research is now behind a paywall. So is every valuable commentary. So is nearly all the data.
This isn’t just bad for me. It’s bad for all investors. Most of us don’t have $1,000 to plop on subscriptions to the major business newspapers and news sources. Investment is based on trust, and where there is no trust, investment disappears.
Consider the recent news that CVS is considering a break-up. I clicked on the “full coverage” link at Google News and was presented with four versions of the story. Every one of them was behind a paywall. Even the Twitter comments were linked to paywalled stories.
We ask why people believe lies. The answer is that lies are free. Fox isn’t behind a paywall. Neither is the rest of the right wing scream machine. When you’re forced, by the failure of business models, to hide the facts from people, lies become a baseline. Those few willing to put truth out there can then be branded as “left-wing,” and readers tied to the baseline will ignore them.
The Business Model Problem
I have been writing about this business model problem my whole career. Over the years I proposed many solutions. But since I was a writer, none was even tried.
I was delighted recently to visit the Online News Association (ONA) convention in Atlanta to see hundreds of journalists who care about the problem. I was there to attend an alumni event for Medill, the journalism school from which I graduated in 1978. Medill taught me that a journalist is someone who works for someone who buys ink by the barrel, or I imagine data by the gigabyte. The key to that last sentence is “works for someone.” Journalists have no autonomy.
The journalism business is so moribund Medill now calls itself a program for “integrated marketing communication.” This disgusts me. The two terms are contradictions. Marketing communications is telling just one truth, that of the person paying for it. The commitment is to money. Journalism is putting both sides out there. The commitment is to truth.
I railed against this for a few hours over cheap champagne. When I sobered up I offered to help launch some seminars on business models, inviting entrepreneurs who’ve cracked the code of journalism profit to the campus for an evening. The response was that the business journalism program is being eliminated.
Democracy Demands Truth
If anyone wants to know how we got into this mess with a Silly Party on one side and a Sensible Party on the other, and the Silly Party favored, that’s the answer. The only viable journalism business model today is political patronage, and only one side is playing the game. At least in the 1790s both the supporters of Adams and Jefferson had their checkbooks out.
My hope for 2024 was that the American people would see through this nonsense and kick the liars to the curb. I am now confident that Harris will win, but the nonsense will remain. It will be waiting for her on the Capitol steps when she takes the oath, and it will hound her every day of her Presidency.
If billionaires want to protect democracy and capitalism, some must support the ongoing search for truth. The lies of the political press are now a direct threat to everything that made them billionaires, everything that separates us from the China of Xi Jinping.
Who is going to step up?
