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Thank you.

>> You tell me what you know and I'll confirm.

I'll keep you in the right direction if I can, but that's all.

Follow the money.

>> In All the President's Men, the money led back to Watergate.

But today in the context of the newspaper business, it leads back to hedge funds gutting newspapers like the fish they used to wrap.

The Internet, Craigslist, a frenzy of debt-fueled consolidation, 9/11, the Great Recession, social media, and COVID, all created a decade's long perfect storm, killing thousands of formerly fine newspapers.

The demise of the Denver Post is an illustration of this story and it's featured in the documentary airing on KBTC called News Matters.

Tonight, our panel of Ink-Stained Wretches talks about the state of the American newspaper and whether Western Washington is maybe doing a little better than the rest.

Newspapering in the 21st century is the discussion next on Northwest Now.

[ Music ] Ken Doctor is probably the most prominent observer of the newspaper industry nationally.

And he estimates that since 2004, about 2,000 newspapers have stopped publishing, countless others have cut staff, stopped or reduced print editions, been twisted into advertisements under the guise of originally reported news.

Here in Western Washington, the Seattle PI is gone, so is a large collection of former weekly, Suburban Shoppers, and alternative newspapers.

But the big guys still persist.

A hedge fund called McClatchy now owns the News Tribune in Tacoma.

But printing is outsourced to the still family-owned Columbian, and the building has been sold off and the staff is a shadow of its former self.

The Seattle Times, however, while smaller than it used to be, may well be one of the most successful local papers in the country, still owned by the Blethen family.

On the whole though, it has been a decade of downsizing and closure.

A PBS documentary called News Matters tells this story through the example of the emaciated Denver Post.

>> At the Denver Post on Monday, more than two dozen reporters, editors, photographers, videographers, page designers, digital producers, and opinion staff will walk out the door.

Our marching orders are to cut a full 30 by the start of July.

The hedge fund managers, often tellingly referred to as vulture capitalists, have hidden behind a narrative that adequately-staffed newsrooms and newspapers can no longer survive in the digital marketplace.

The smart money is that in a few years, the Denver Post will be rotting bones.

And a major city and an important political region will find itself without a newspaper.

We call for action.

Consider this editorial a plea to Alden, owner of Digital First Media, one of the largest newspaper chains in the country, to rethink its business strategy across all its newspaper holdings.

Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom.

If Alden isn't willing to do good journalism here, they should sell the Post to owners who will.

It was just awful.

I felt like I was floating out of my body and like not even attached to the real world.

And like I had this very clear thought, this is where the Denver Post dies.

The entire journalistic ecosystem is suffering right now.

News deserts, as others have said, are emerging and spreading across the country.

We've lost more than 2,000 newspapers in the United States.

That means towns, that means entire counties that have no newspaper.

And when that happens, the soundtrack of a community just gets muted.

Like you just don't know what's going on.

What's is going to be like when there isn't that voice anymore that steps in and like plays a referee in a certain kind of way?

Welcome to revolution!

[ Multiple Speakers ] It's just this ocean of information that just is washing over all all of us.

And, you know, mixed in with all of those wonderful nuggets of factual information is all this other stuff, all this noise, and all of this misinformation, and disinformation.

>> Joining us now, our Seattle Times free press editor, Brier Dudley; Washington Coalition for Open Government president and former Seattle Times editor; Mike Fancher; University of Washington lecturer and writer, Caley Cook; and Knute Berger, author, long-time journalist, and the editor at-large at Crosscut.

Welcome all of you to Northwest Now.

Great to have a discussion about the situation in the newspaper industry.

And to be honest, I have had this program on my do-list for a couple of years, so I'm really glad that we're able to sit down and have this conversation.

I also say, I know each one of you can do an hour on this topic yourself, but we'll keep it moving.

I want to do -- I want to start and work right down the line with the same question for all of you.

Brier, business models come and go.

So why does this matter and why in particular does it matter when it comes to newspapers?

>> Well, even though newspapers have shrunk a whole lot, about 60% over the last 15 years, they still provide most of the news that you read about in a community.

Even in places with digital startups and things like that, most of the original reporting still comes from newspapers.

And that's essential to keep voters informed, to hold elected officials accountable, and to build community, and, you know, get out of this kind of divisive rut that we've been in in politics lately.

>> Mike?

>> Well, democracy, democracy is essentially practiced at the local level.

And so the ability of people to be informed at the local level about their own community and their neighbors and to participate in civic affairs is dramatically important.

When there's no newspaper, that participation goes down.

>> Caley?

>> Practicing democracy is about muscle memory.

And we can't practice that muscle memory without having that newspaper be part of that dialogue over and over and over.

And a lot of our population is missing that as newspapers shrink and go away.

>> Knute?

>> You know, I do a lot of history, and I've been reading a lot of the newspapers.

You know, Seattle used to have four daily newspapers.

Now it has one essentially, and, you know, some people in the electronics sphere.

But it really is, as people have said, about information, about -- people were better informed in 1900 or even 1915, 1920, than they are now in terms of what the daily newspapers deliver to them.

>> So I'm going put some red meat on the table here for you guys to pounce upon.

But, you know, continuing this discussion about business models, they come and they go.

Buggy whip makers were here, now they're not.

Same with newspapers.

A lot of things have come in to fill in and take their places.

What's wrong with all that great new content out there online?

Brier?

>> Well, you need to continue to have a professional reporting service.

You know, think of it a little bit like firefighters.

You know, sure, we had firetrucks 100 years ago too, we still need them.

And even if you don't read the newspaper every day, you benefit from having the service operating in the background that's keeping track of things, holding officials accountable.

And when the time comes that you need to vote, you know, they've done the reporting and you can go back and catch up.

So that service is going to need to be there.

Yeah, the business model is evolving.

The old ad model isn't working quite as well, for a lot of reasons.

And hopefully we find something new.

Because it's really an essential service for the community.

>> Mike, I think the point I wanted to hit here is that all content is not created equal.

You're a former editor.

There were standards and practices that a guy had to follow before he'd turn something into you.

That's not always the case online, correct?

>> Well, it's not always the case even in print.

But the layers of editors that newspapers traditionally have had -- the checking and crosschecking within the newsroom -- gives you a verification that is very hard to replicate in the digital world.

And I would say that first the discipline of verification, the dedication to public service -- which was always the mission of journalism.

And I think that's what we really need to talk about.

Newspapers are one form of journalism, but the first journalism text written at the University of Missouri in about 1908 said, "Printing is not journalism.

It's a method of distribution."

But newspapers are important I think because of that daily habit and practice, the muscle memory idea.

>> And the big thing that I think is missing too online is consequences.

Caley, you know, if I turned in a piece of junk in an institution that had editorial controls in place, there are consequences.

I'm not saying that you, you know, were whipped with a wet noodle or anything like that.

But careers were at stake.

Reputations were at stake.

Readership was at stake.

You couldn't just say anything, in other words.

Why is that important?

>> They still are, they still are.

And I guess I would be a little less doomsday about this.

I would say that my view of the future of journalism is more as an ecosystem, right.

And the layers of that ecosystem are a lot more niche.

We don't just have one or two dailies that operate in a metropolitan area and set that agenda anymore.

And that's okay with me.

Because we have the person who does a niche blog on the city council and the person who writes only about ferries -- the boat kind, not the other kind -- and the people that kind of make this system work, the nonprofits and the different types of operations that make this sort of chaotic system, or seemingly chaotic from the outside, actually more of an in-depth operation than what we were doing with one or two metropolitan dailies before.

So I guess maybe I'm a little less doomsday about it.

>> Well, I certainly think there's something to say about the democratization and the spread of many voices, particularly if they're credible.

So there's definitely a balance there on that scale.

But I think the value of having that baseline of truth and that baseline of editorial control and that baseline of common language of what is not necessarily the news -- because it can be very niche -- but what is true is exceedingly important too.

I'm not the guest, I will stop.

Knute, you are all about history.

And I think that's one of the big questions for you.

I'm going to force you into a box you're not going to want to be in.

There are so many things you can look at and cite as reasons for the demise of newspapers.

What do you think the one big one or the one or two big ones are?

>> Well, one is the economic model.

The Internet really changed that.

Things like Craigslist and people being able to have an alternative to paid advertising in local newspapers or national newspapers, I think that was a big factor.

I think social media is playing a role.

And that -- to get back to points been made, that journalists are trained, they are overseen by editors who are trained.

And the idea is to collect actual facts, not alternative facts but facts.

And then present those facts and present perhaps a commentary on those facts.

>> Context.

>> And contexts for the facts.

Social media has basically turned every individual into a media outlet.

One person on Twitter has a microphone that they can reach the entire world.

And so I think what we're seeing is, it's a great way to disseminate information, it's not a great way to disseminate facts.

>> Brier, the News Matters documentary and a lot of commentary over the years about the demise of newspapers from Ken Doctor and whoever else you read, Pointer, all the places that we check in with, have talked a lot about the hedge funds and the role they've played to get these papers and to milk them for whatever they're worth.

I would argue though -- and tell me your thoughts on this -- wasn't the table kind of set by ownership and by management to some degree for the hedge funds?

I mean, this didn't just start blowing up when the hedge funds stepped in.

They stepped in because there was an opportunity because debt bombs had blown up with several of the large chains.

Give us some perspective on that.

>> Yes, there were some self-inflicted wounds, no doubt.

The hedge funds and the consolidation though are a huge problem.

You know, not only are they consolidating ownership of multiple papers so you have fewer institutional voices in the country, but they're also milking what's left of the industry and not reinvesting in them.

And they're selling off assets.

They're cutting the reporters -- the facilities down to the bone.

I mean, if you look right next door to this building, we have am empty newspaper shell.

The company's now owned by a hedge fund.

So they're not committed to the public service mission that independent local newspapers used to be.

They're committed to building these big brands.

They can maybe try and get some scale for advertising.

It's just not the same thing.

And what's emerged are what we call "ghost newspapers."

Where they're an empty shell with nothing in them.

The Denver Post is an example of that, you know, in this documentary.

And so behind them, we've seen some interesting little local ventures.

And Colorado is a great example.

I would pushback a little bit on your comments though, because I don't think the public has time to assemble an executive briefing of the news every day, to keep track of 15 different blogs.

Here's a guy writing about the ferries.

Here's a person that's writing about transportation.

And here's a person that's writing about this.

It's hard enough to keep track of all the things in our lives and what's going on online.

And that's the service that local newspapers provide is, we've had a team of people who've selected important things -- things that are relevant to you -- and there's a whole range of them in there.

It drops on your doorstep every day.

It's easy.

You can be through it in 15 minutes.

So there's still a lot of value in that.

And the hedge funds are not really investing in that product as much as local independent newspapers do.

>> Just so folks can recognize these names.

Hedge funds like Fortress, Alden, Chatham, Apollo.

One of the things, you know, Mike, I haven't been able to figure out -- Brier, you gestured at it -- why did they pay $633 million for The Tribune?

There must be some value in there.

I can't quite figure out what the scheme is.

I picture some bond villain sitting in a room hatching a scheme.

But what is it?

If the newspapers can't -- if the advertising model is broken down, why are they spending good money for buggy whip factories?

I don't quite get it.

>> Cut, cut, cut, that was it.

That there was a lot -- because a newsroom is very expensive.

And essentially they saw the opportunity to go in and reduce the size of the staff.

Nationally, in the period of about 2004 to 2010, newspapers lost about 30% of their staff.

In Seattle, it was closer to 60%, because the demise of the PI and some other changes.

But I think that's it.

Sometimes they got real estate.

They were more interesting in owning the real estate and selling it off than producing a newspaper.

But I also want to comment on the importance of local ownership and local journalism.

Because we live in the community that we're covering, we care about people.

And probably the most dramatic change we're going through right now is shifting from the professional model of journalism -- which was, we're the professionals, we will distribute the news to you, we will provide you with.

>> Aggregated.

>> Right.

>> Gatekeeper.

>> And we're trying to maintain the standards and the practices of that professional model while we get richly engaged with the public.

Because we're in an interactive world now.

That was the biggest change that came with digital.

People can radically share information.

So we need this deep, rich engagement with the public.

And news organizations of all sorts and sizes see that as more of a partnership, really democratizing of the news and of news coverage.

>> Caley, the term "ghost papers" was brought up.

Another term I want people to understand, "news deserts."

What's a news desert?

And it must be hot there.

>> Yeah, yeah.

I used to live in one, out in the middle of rural Nevada.

News deserts are places where newspapers maybe once existed -- not even just newspapers but any kind of media or news outlet -- and they don't anymore.

And sometimes things pop up in that space, some really creative ways of distributing news and ideas to the public.

But oftentimes they don't.

Newspapers can be expensive to run.

They can be difficult and take expertise.

And a lot of times, our millennials and folks that I teach at UW aren't willing to move to rural places where these deserts often happen.

But we're now seeing news deserts in places that aren't traditionally in really rural or abandoned areas, in places in our backyard.

Places where, say, maybe some publishing had a publication before that was very rich in content and reporting, and don't anymore.

So it's a problem.

And it's something that we think a lot about at UW, because our students are searching out jobs in those places where they don't exist anymore.

>> Knute, what's your take on how Western Washington fares?

The Blethen family -- you talked about the historical piece against who owns the Seattle Times.

It's significantly reduced.

We have a couple Times' veterans, you know, with us here.

The national papers seem to be making it, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

And the LA Times has a benevolent new owner, who's come in and wants to invest in keeping a viable newspaper.

So how do we fare between news deserts and the New York Times -- which is killing it how.

How do we fare in Western Washington?

>> Well, I think we fare really well.

I mean, for one thing, you can live here and you can get the New York Times and get the Wall Street Journal.

In other words, you have access to a lot.

But I think the Times is a very special entity within the ecosystem of the Puget Sound region.

Because, you know, they are committed not just to local ownership, but really committed in the newsroom to doing really good reporting, in-depth reporting.

And they've got the Pulitzers to prove it.

And they make it possible for entities like Crosscut, our online thing.

We don't have to try and replicate what the Times does.

We can go into areas that they've missed or that they're not interested in, looking at things from a different angle.

>> Or expand on.

>> Expand on, exactly.

So I think that they really hold a lot of ground.

They also have a tradition of being willing to go to court to defend the First Amendment, public access.

They have and still are investing money in that.

Where a lot of small entities can't.

So a lot of sort of small fish really benefit from having a very vital daily newspaper in the city.

>> Brier, you're at the Times and you actually have a job that is involved in this issue.

Talk a little bit about some of the thinking about a new model and about how good newspapers like the Seattle Times can continue to be viable and what the road in the future looks like.

>> Well, thank you.

Thanks for the nice words there.

Yes, I am lucky.

I applied at the PI, and they didn't hire me.

Fortunately I ended up at the Times instead.

But there's actually some good news.

Despite all the contraction and the changes that have happened, newspapers are starting to figure out ways to better perform in the digital realm.

A lot of things, positive things, are happening.

There's a lot of innovation with startups and new ventures in places like Colorado.

Newspapers like the Seattle Times have been able to invest in new technologies, make it easier to subscribe digitally.

We've seen a lot of growth in digital subscriptions.

That's really the cornerstone of our future.

>> But the revenues don't come with those subscriptions though.

>> You know, there is a mismatch there.

>> Absolutely.

But, you know, people across the United State still place higher trust in local newspapers than they do in national media, which says good things about our opportunity going forward.

I think people during the pandemic came to really realize the value of local news and information.

Readership just soared.

The challenge right now is can old media maintain that readership that surged during the pandemic and find new ways forward.

Also, the country has woken up to this journalism crisis, and we're seeing some really great responses.

States are responding.

Washington State's talking now about extending special tax preferences to help newspapers survive.

The federal government, there's great action happening in Congress.

In fact, Washington's delegation is a leader in an effort nationally to find ways to help sustain the independent press in the United States.

So I think the future is brightening a little bit.

>> I think that's a tough question, Mike.

You're just sitting there ready for me to hit you with a tough one.

I'm kidding.

But should taxpayer dollars be involved in supporting formerly hugely for-profit businesses?

>> Yes.

And historically, the government has supported newspapers and local journalism through postal rates and classified ads, public information ads.

So yes.

And 10 years ago, I wrote a paper for the Knight Foundation, and that was not even something anybody was willing to discuss.

It's a nonstarter.

Don't even go there.

And now it's a real thing because I think people see the need.

Another thing that's really happening is philanthropy, both personal and foundational.

And the Seattle Times is probably the leading paper in the country in terms of launching journalistic ventures funded by nontraditional sources.

So they've got traffic and transportation, education, homelessness, investigative.

And they just launched one on mental health.

These are all deep, important journalistic projects that are funded from nontraditional sources.

And if you'd like to donate to that, you can do that.

>> The local car dealership isn't so interested anymore, but some of the foundations more so, yeah.

Caley, this is one I struggle with: talking to young people about career advice.

You know, there's so much good and so much great.

It's been awesome.

And then there are parts of it, like, really, am I going to tell some kid to go do this?

I don't think so.

How do you deal with that?

Because, I tell you, I wrestle with it.

>> You know, it's not easy.

And I can't paint a perfect picture for my students.

But what I can do, and it's honest, is have an enthusiasm for where we're headed.

And I do.

I think -- I see a lot of optimism and a lot of growth, a lot of growth and engagement.

And our students are learning in our program not just how to be newspaper reporters, they're learning how to be critical, analytical, hardy, creative.

And those skills don't just work in that traditional lens.

>> Thrifty.

>> Exactly.

>> I hope you have that in there.

>> We do.

>> Last question for you, Knute, in 45 seconds here.

Do you think we're going to get Google and Facebook to help pay for what I consider to be one of the original sins of the industry, well-intentioned, which was giving away content for free?

How do you see that resolving?

And I know that's a huge question for 40 seconds, but go ahead.

>> Yeah.

Well, I think people are very used to free content, and they're going to continue to want it.

I don't think the demand for it is going to ease.

But I also think that people realize that there can be a big difference if you pay something for content.

You know, I mean, I get a ton of free content, but I also subscribe to numerous publications so that I have access to better information.

But you have to prove your value.

You can't just automatically assume, you know, that people are going to fork over a subscription fee.

>> Good.

Great conversation, everybody.

I told you this one would go quickly.

But it's one I've been wanting to do for a long time.

And I appreciate y'all coming to Northwest Now.

All right, here now is a programming note.

Be sure to watch News Matters next Tuesday night at 10 PM right here on KBTC.

It is a great documentary and well worth your time.

The demise of this country is directly related to the demise of newspapers.

And I'm sorry, but if you don't subscribe to and read one reputable daily newspaper with traditional editorial controls in place, you're failing your basic citizenship test.

The bottom line, the Scripps Company's motto is "give light and the people will find their own way."

The Washington Post's is, "democracy dies in darkness."

I'm here to tell you that both are true.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

To watch this program again or to share it with others, Northwest Now can be found on the web@kbtc.org.

And be sure to follow us on Twitter at Northwest Now.

Thanks for taking a closer look on this edition of Northwest Now.

Until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.

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